Latest Google Chrome release adds voice support for web apps

Google has released the latest version of Chrome, version 25, boasting several enhancements and features over the previous version. The biggest is the addition of Chrome's new Web Speech API that allows developers to integrate speech recognition right within the web browser.

Google's Android is very heavy on featuring user voice recognition, and it appears the company wanted to bring similar features over to Google Chrome with the latest release. There's no word on when we might see the Google Now-like feature come to the browser.

Last month, Google showed off the feature on a demo page that allows users to dictate an email right into Chrome. We gave it a try, and it's actually pretty handy. It will be interesting to see what developers do with it.

In Chrome 25 you'll also find the disabling of extensions that snuck past a user when they installed a third-party app.

Google explained the change in January. "The original intent was to give people an option to add useful extensions when installing applications, but unfortunately this feature has been widely abused by third parties who added extensions without user consent," the company said. Google does give the option to re-enable the extensions upon first boot.

Chrome 25 brings the normal round of stability fixes, improvements in managing and securing extensions, and improvements to both HTML 5 and Javascript, as well.

Users can update to Chrome 25 directly from Google's website or the update feature found within the browser.

The baby of the Lint team, Jake is responsible for covering the latest news out of the US. He began writing technology news at 15, covering the world of Apple for several publications. He has a deep interest in the latest gadgets and gizmos. Outside of breaking news, Jake enjoys drumming, music and photography.